Listening to Art: A Journey Through Krystal Epic

written by Cyanide Seelowe




Multimedia experiences are abound throughout Second Life, but none are quite as beautiful, fluid, or unique as the ones that can be found in Enniv Zarf's PK Gallery.

When signing on in-world on a rainy Sunday afternoon, I was told about this place by the lovely Sasun Steinbeck. Since ignoring Miss Sasun is very much like ignoring a hurricane, I simply had to check it out :]

Immediate arrival into the PK Gallery is extremely promising, especially if you like classical and neo-classical music. Especially made for the gallery and its works, the beautiful and soothing movements of piano and cello surround you with haunting melodies that capture you and invite you to explore.

It is highly recommended that the Kystal Tour be taken- at a modest price of 25 Lindens that is put toward that land tiers that the gallery rests on, the Kystal Tour takes you to various rooms and landscapes that are made entirely of crystal. Coordinated to neo-classical piano, the swirling textures and the dancing light in each room promises to entrance you and may inspire you to do romantic things- so bring a date along, if you can :] each room can be visited after the tour so you can take a closer look at the inner workings of the Krystal Tour, and lounge upon custom-made crystal furniture.



On the main floor of the gallery awaits the Nine Tones exhibit, a series of 15 artworks that immerse you in a fantastic multimedia experience. As stated in the program notes for Nine Tones:

"The illustrations of Nine Tones are composed of basic strokes such as lines and dots as inspired by Chinese writing. They act as both the contents of the paintings as well as the rhythmic gestures of the music. The melodic/harmonic materials are derived from the Nine Tonal inflections of the Cantonese Language. The piece could be thought of as a sound rendering of the Cantonese language as understood through basic pen strokes."

Despite the minimal use of materials in each of the 15 works, it is a wonderful example of experiencing events as a whole as we watch smaller incidences come together.

In addition to the Krystal Tour and the Nine Tones exhibit, further exploration of the gallery will take you to several lounges with custom-made furniture by Enniv Zarf (available for purchase, like most of the works there). There is also an area where several rides are available for minimal fees- each in their own right a separate tour of the gallery, and will give you different perspectives of the place as a whole.

Overall, the PK Gallery is a truly immersive experience for your eyes and your ears, so don't miss it!

PK Gallery SLURL

EXHIBIT A at the Odyssey SIM.

A new gallery opened in the Odyssey SIM to day.
Landmark: Odyssey (38,30,23)



The Odyssey SIM is financed by Dynamis Corporation in the UK, an internet company that dels in business, said one of the curators of the exhibition, Sugar Seville, to the press earlier today. The other curator of the exhibition, Beavis Palowakski and Sugar have been working on the structure - Beavis actually built the gallery, and I must say, they have done a beautiful job with it.
The whole Odyssey SIM, is for art and performance. Some individual artist are already installed, like Ian Ah, Max "dorkbot" (Maximillian Nakamura) and Wixli Flimflams PR-office. Sugar:"Odyssey will be hosting prescence for a number of real life galleries". I asked which ones, but no names were revealed...

The exhibition is a group show. "Most are artists that we met in world," says Sugar. "Some are rl artists." "This big painting is by David Scher (av-name: Nitido Cortes), a NYC artist. It was in the armory show and reportedly sold". The artists are from all over the world, like Italy, Japan, UK, US, Ireland, Korea, Canada. The artists are: Ian Ah, Gazira Babelli, Isra Batra, Nitido Cortes, Alan Dojoji, Fau Ferdinand, Masami Kuramoto, Pavig Lok, Man Michinaga, Koga Nishi, Beavis Palowakski, Sea Ra, Bacon Rolls and Chi5 Shenzhou.
Here are the curators, Sugar Seville and Beavis Palowakski:



Can't mention all of the art works here, great works all of them though. You must go and see yourself. But...


Alan Dojoji (rl Alan Sondheim) is showing a video I find really interesting (picture above). This is what his notecard says: "Droste and Berber in rehearsal never before released footage from the original production with new tabla accompaniment especially commissioned by the hairs of Droste and Berber cut off from the bodies of Droste and Berber as well as accompanying avatars created from cloth and wire held in suspension creating a perfect framework for this first time and perhaps only this time a framework where Berber first sadly languished then rose to the occasion of Droste's bizarre accompaniment this silent film direct from the Weimar era salvaged from numerous bunkers of works of tired cinema lay sadly in shadows where reels of film were found presented now almost in their pristine original condition the hairs of Droste and Berber were tangled sadly among the reels where memories of Droste and Berber languished among the clubs of old Berlin http://www.asondheim.org Maud Liardon: dance; Foofwa d'Imobilite: choreographyAlan Sondheim: animation, mise-en-scene, sound 2006-2007" As for that, it's really fascinating to see how the avatars in the video deform, and the mingeling between avatars and rl dancers. What's interesting about our avatar anatomy is how awkward it is... I've seen some "nice" SL-nude photogaphy that (maybe involuntarly) captures this. Like we have some sort of skeletal disease. Also made me think of the SL performance tomorrow at the Office, Production of Architecture: Second Life First Life Dance, which I don't how will be, but am so excited to see it. They are going to mix SL and rl perfomance realtime.
Another work in the exhibition involving deformation: Gazia Babellis "Avatar on canvas".
SPOILERWARNING!!!Don't read further if you don't want to know the end.

The painting, a Francis Bacon appropriation, with a chair you can sit on. Sit there for a short time and you start to deform! Or jump of and walk around while you deform, "thrown back to (Second) life more violently" so to speak. So cool! I like very much that the viewer becomes a part of the art work. That's great! (Picture to the right shows me and Max deforming.)
And this one; Isra Batras "the space". A textured box with this pink colored man with boobs/ woman with large dick figure working very hard (masturbating). Nice humour!

During the opening, I got to know a litle more about Man Michinagas drawing robot from Man himself (rl Patrick Lichty http://www.voyd.com/). The robot is the blue thing in the photo belowe, and he is making more robots: modified sumi-e pens. He shows serveral of his "Zen for Bot" which are "Real Life works created by interacting with a small, semi-autonomous robot for which I developed/hacked the software." "The name "Zen for Bot" comes from the early Fluxus work, "Zen for head" by Nam June Paik, in which he dipped his head in a bucket of ink and dragged it along the paper like a calligraphy pen."

Man explaining to me how he made his drawings.

Man Michinaga.

Then we all flocked around Gaziras work to get ourselves mangled...

(Click on images to see them larger.)

The show is up until 8th of April.
The next show is a solo show of Gazira Babelli!

Wixli Flimflams report of the event with a video HERE.

Plurabelle Posthorn

Computerized Haiku

by Cyanide Seelowe

Aside from the use of the newsblog itself, I've noticed that we rarely give Virtual Writers their dues in recognition here. It's all about "visual art" this and "music boxes" that. Where's the interesting journalism, poetry and prose news? Are we just going to leave our literary peers in the dust?

Of course not. We love ALL Virtual Artists here :] And so, as a tribute to all those voracious verbal vagabonds out there, I have found just the story for you!

In 1968, the first major exhibition for computer art was opened in London and artistically Christened "Cybernetic Serendipity". It was a groundbreaking exhibition in that it made the viewers question what it was that was making the art involved in the show- was it the computers ,calculating numbers and running code, or was it the mind that created the formulas and directions for the computers to follow?

Most of the art for the show was text-based (a lot of which has been recreated here for your chronocidal enjoyment). From the high entropy essays, to the simple and down-to-earth Haiku generating programs, 1968's technology is still as astounding and meanigful as it was when it was first made.

The Haiku-generating programs were originally created by Margaret Masterman and Robin McKinnon-Wood with its very simple and self-explanitory purpose. The program only gives you nouns and verbs to work with, and once you have selected your desired words, the computer fills in the rest for you- and presto! You've just collaborated with a computer to make a poem.

In 1968, the Haikus were pinned to a wall- today, you can submit them to a website and have them archived for... who knows what? In any case, it's fun to read what other people have compiled, and it's a great feeling to contribute to other artists' art, living or cybernetic.

ALL CROWNED IN THE DAWN,
I TASTE DARK STREAMS IN THE COLD.
LOOK! THE MOTH HAS FLED.

The Meaning of "Virtual"

written by Cyanide Seelowe

A month or two ago, I posted a thread in SecondLife.com's community forums. Modestly placed in the "resident-run websites" forum with the modest title of "Virtual Artist Alliance Art Newsblog", my intention was the advertise the blog's existence, as I am quite proud of the work that my colleagues and I do here. In response to the thread, a new perspective was thrust upon me in regards to the VAA's identity, as new perspectives have a common way of doing on the InterWebs. Copied and Pasted directly from the forum, here is what a reader had to say about our title:

"I really like your blog, but I gotta say I'm less than enthusiastic about the title. To me, the term "virtual artist' is a bit belittling. I'm not a 'virtual' artist; I'm a real artist. I happen to apply my real art to virtual worlds, but that doesn't mean it's 'virtual art'. I'm real, and so is my work. The nature of the medium to which the work is applied doesn't change that.

A painter's canvas is a virtual world too, and so is an author's writing paper, but no one would give the painter or the author such a title, no matter how unintentionally, to imply that they or their works are not real. Why should it be any different for me just because my canvas of choice runs on electricity?

I'd be fine with 'virtual world artist', but not 'virtual artist'. Make sense?"

Yes, of course it does. You can find my reply to this statement here, but my message to my fellow members is far more pressing:

I'd like to make it clear to everyone who is a member of the Virtual Artist Alliance that I do not consider you to be Virtual (as in "close to real") Artists; the purpose of our group is to celebrate Virtual (as in "computer generated") and Digital art and artists. Reading this individual's opinion and taking it into account made me consider our purpose a little more closely.

That being said, nothing has changed :] Despite our somewhat blurry beginnings, our mission is still to cater to the Artist and their needs, not to belittle them with something as unimportant as a title floating above their heads.

The lesson? Don't look too deeply into the things that come out of my head. Ideas can only be as complicated as the mind they come from :]

Artist sandhya2 Patel at Oyster Bay

written by Rezago Kokorin


This was the third of Oyster Bay's 5-part series of ArtTalks. On the evening of March 2nd we heard from artist sandhy2 Patel.

"I love Second Life so that is where I started. I've been here over three years and have learned a lot and had so much fun. In RL I'm an artist too, with a card business and I also do fine art and sculpture in RL."








"This fountain was done for a contest at Edifice Rex. They gave out textures and said we could do anything we wanted with them but there must be only 14 prims in the statue, like the lines in a haiku poem. So this was my answer to that challenge. It is really a Jack -in-the-pulpit plant. I saw it in my yard, just hiding, and wanted to do something with that. It was quiet and elligant. The fountain water is running into itself and that to me indicaqtes the quiteness and completeness of the plant i saw."

The above is commissioned work, the Hand of God from the Cystene Chapel.

Below are a set of Alice in Wonderland figures which she made for a single scene. This scene, along with much of her other work, can be found at Sandhya's Showplace, Kula 1 (235, 121, 22).

"The Aquarius Lady is just something i thought up one day. It was for Burning Life the sl expo that they have every year."





















"This is the statue of Andrew Jackson, like the one in New Orleans. That was done for the Katrina hurricane relief. There was a whole sim that looked just like New Orleans before the flood. This is the statue in Jackson park. I had to do a lot of research on it to make it look as much like it as i could. The artists there did an awesome job on recreating the city."

The Andrew Jackson statue can be seen at:
The Big Easy - New Orleans recreated, Big Easy (128, 245, 25)




"[These]...are like butterfly people, popping out of their egg or what ever they pop out of. Some are wildly leaping into life, some are more careful, and some are dramatic."


Landmarks:
Sandhya's Showplace, Kula 1 (235, 121, 22)
The Big Easy - New Orleans recreated, Big Easy (128, 245, 25)
Art at Oyster Bay Aquarium, Oyster (38, 173, 82)

Kid Creatures! Aiee!

written by Cyanide Seelowe

What would a child's drawing look like if it were painted realistically?

The question was both asked and answered by Dave Devrie, the creator of the book, the lecture, and the website entitled The Monster Engine.

Dave Devrie has loved comic books since he was a child. He loved them so much that when he grew up, he found himself in the lucky position of being able to draw them. It was through his career as a comic artist and a creator of monsters for Universal studios that he learned the dynamics of color, detail, and light when it comes to attracting the human eye- but none of the monsters or heroes he created seemed to match up to the images that his niece created with markers, crayons, and cheap paper. So he embarked on the quest of taking the drawings of a child and applying all of the professional techniques he had learned during his career while remaining true to the original design that came from the child's drawings.

The Monster Engine is the first in a series of books- future titles will include The Undersea Engine, The Circus Engine, The Hero Engine, and so on. The subject matter will change according to title, but the principle will remain the same: All of the original drawings will come directly from the imagination of a child.

Whether or not you like the artworks involved, I implore you to visit the website. A world of whimsy, wonder, and outright silliness awaits you in the Monster Engine!

Sasun's Gallery Tour HUD

See Dale Innis previous post: an interview with Sasun Steinbeck, about her sculptures and her very important work with "The Galleries of Second Life" poster. I just tried out the Gallery Tour HUD you receive when clicking the poster. 211 galleries are uploaded! You can tour alphabetically or random. I made a litle video to give our newbies (and others) some idea of how a Gallery tour in Second Life might be.


The video is made with Fraps Free version and edited in Windows Moviemaker. Simple and free. (My first video. I might be embarrassed about it a litle later in my new video career.)

Plurabelle Posthorn